Posts by: Brett
I want to start by saying this: technology is a type of currency in business. There are, in fact, a few types of currency in business: actual money, talent, brand, and technology.
Yet, I’ve recently noticed that decisions about technology seem to be made in a space devoid of fully cognizant understanding of these decisions. Why [...]
A few weeks ago, three to be exact, I took a position as director of education and head of product at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. 3rd Ward is a 30,000 sq. ft. maker space, set up with various studios and shops so that people can make and learn skills that are either difficult to [...]
This Sunday I attended the annual Book 2 Camp, which has become the pre-TOC venue for unconferencing since it began 3 years ago. All programming is proposed and carried out that day, so you never know what you are going to get. And, overall, I think the maturity and value of the discussion of these [...]
What makes up a user’s experience of purchasing and using a product from any given company? There is a discoverability/marketing component, where the customer needs to be made aware of a product’s existence. There is the purchase decision component, where various factors, many psychological, come together to make a transaction happen. There is the actual [...]
I don’t often get very personal on this blog, but right now seems like as good a time as ever to do so.
As some/many of you who follow me on Twitter may know, my (day) job and I broke up on Friday. And, really that is ok. It was a long time in the [...]
It’s a new year, and time to purge ourselves of the old and bring in the new. For years now, long before I was even involved in publishing, the industry has latched onto the “New Year, New You” marketing motto as each new calendar begins, in the hopes of selling books to customers who have [...]
Over the last 12 months as an observer and commenter on publishing it has become apparent to me that change is happening, albeit slowly. Some may even say, iteratively. We’ve adopted new lingo, new job skills, new channels, new ways of doing things. But, one things remains the same: we are still creators of content. [...]
I had an interesting conversation this past weekend about a recurring theme lately: false marketing. Specifically, about how so many companies employ an angle in product marketing which is patently false. Yet, in the consumer world, it doesn’t really matter any more because if it sounds good, it sells products.
A few years ago, I [...]
Recently, I saw an ad for the new “Artisan Breakfast Sandwich” over at McStarbucks. Oh yes, this is a thing. Think about this for a second. Artisan. Breakfast. Sandwich. From. Starbucks. Whoa. It blows my mind to consider this entire concept. It’s like some sort of nihilistic paradox where word anarchy reigns supreme and you [...]
A few years ago, if you were talking about anything in publishing, you were talking about XML. There were blog posts, and webinars, and panels, and workshops, and white papers, and… It was the XML revolution and publishers, who, at the time, were barely cognizant of how to produce an ebook at all, let alone using this [...]
